Joshua Logan Has Time Of His Life Re-creating The Times Of His

Life

April 21, 1985|By Douglas J. Keating. Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

Since Joshua Logan is a quintessential man of the theater, a field in which superlatives are employed with abandon, his remark that ``I Remember It Well`` is ``the biggest success I have ever had in my life`` might be regarded as a bit of an exaggeration.

After all, at 76 Logan has had one of the most successful careers of anyone in show business. He directed and helped write ``South Pacific``; he co-wrote and directed ``Mr. Roberts`` and ``Wish You Were Here``; and he directed ``Annie Get Your Gun,`` ``Knickerbocker Holiday,`` ``The World of Suzie Wong,`` ``Middle of the Night`` and ``Picnic.`` His films include

``Camelot,`` ``Sayonara`` and ``Bus Stop.``

With those triumphs to look back on, why would Logan feel that a show in which he reminisces about his 55-year career and sings songs with his wife is his ``biggest success``?

``Being a director and telling people how to do things is kind of a bore after a while,`` he said in his New York apartment. ``You never get a return from it. It is not half as much fun to get a laugh via someone else as it is to get it for yourself.``

Logan considers humor to be the hallmark of ``I Remember It Well,`` which he is touring to various parts of the country. ``It`s a comedy evening--a little bit gossipy--and musical,`` he said. He and his wife, usually accompanied by two singers and two musicians, have been doing the show 12 to 20 times a year for the last decade.

``The funniest story I tell is when President Kennedy saw the show I directed called `Mr. President` and made some suggestions about how to pick up the second act,`` Logan said. The incident, he recalled, occurred at a Washington benefit performance of the musical comedy, which he enigmatically referred to as ``a smash flop.``

Logan said he was astonished when Kennedy sat down next to him and began talking about the show, surprised not only that the President would presume to suggest how the show could be improved but also that his suggestions were so terrible.

``No, I didn`t take the advice--it was the most ridiculous advice ever given by anyone in the world,`` Logan said, adding that the story has a great punchline that he was not about to reveal beforehand.

Not all the songs in ``I Remember It Well`` are directly connected to Logan or his shows. One of them is the song from which the show takes its title--``I Remember It Well`` from ``Gigi,`` sung by Logan and his wife, Nedda, a former actress whom he married a few years after she performed in Logan`s 1940 production of ``Charley`s Aunt.``

```Gigi` was a play I would like to have done. Someone else did it but they did it well,`` Logan said. ``On the stage, the song was sung by Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold; we are arrogant enough to feel we do it better.``

The Logans` opening song, ``Harrigan,`` has deep personal and immediate significance for Nedda Harrigan Logan. The song was written by George M. Cohan for her father, Edward Harrigan, a turn-of-the-century theatrical producer and performer. Regarded as one of the seminal creative minds in American musical theater, he is the subject of a new musical, ``Harrigan and Hart,`` that opened on Broadway last month.

Although Mrs. Logan never knew her father--he died in 1911 when she was only 3--she has taken a lifelong interest in his career and has been closely involved with the writing and production of the musical.

``She`s been talking about her father`s work ever since we were married,`` Logan said. ``I`ve always said her main ambition in life is keeping her father`s memory alive. Now she is doing it.``

Logan is not associated in any way with ``Harrigan and Hart.`` ``I just sit on the sidelines and grouse,`` he remarked, and, as if to prove the point, he did a little grousing about the production: ``I think I could have done a better job, but I never like anyone`s work but my own.``

Logan`s seeming lack of enthusiasm for ``Harrigan and Hart`` extends to the rest of the shows in New York. ``I go to the theater almost every night, but the shows are very bad. I get offers (to direct plays), but they are so terrible that I don`t want to do them. I don`t even want to see them. I will do anything I want to see.``

Logan`s current project is a musical that triply meets the definition of something he likes. Not only will he direct, but he has written the book and lyrics for ``Huck and Jim on the Mississippi,`` a musical inspired by Mark Twain`s ``Huckleberry Finn.``

``It`s a musical in the tradition of the Golden Age of musical comedy, which is the age I worked in as a young man,`` Logan said. Since the passing of that age, he has seen few musicals that impress him. ``The only one who writes good lyrics is Stephen Sondheim, but he writes such poor music. To my ear, at least, it is unmelodic--they are hard to listen to. His lyrics are ruined by his music.``

Despite his jaundiced view of contemporary theater, Logan, has no plans to retire. ``I`m a whirlwind of activity right this minute,`` he said. ``My collaborator (Bruce Pomahac, the composer of ``Huck and Jim``) is at the other end of the room right now waiting for me to finish talking to you.

``I love the theater. I just don`t like anything that isn`t the theater. I`ve had a very lucky life. I hope I drop dead in a rehearsal some day after giving an actress instructions on how to hold her fan. I`m going to keep directing until it happens.``